In silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials, the well-known couplers generally applicable thereto include, for example, yellow couplers of open-chained ketomethylene type compounds, magenta couplers of pyrazolone type compounds or pyrazoloazole type compounds, and cyan couplers of phenol type compounds or naphthol type compounds.
The pyrazolone type compounds have so far been used as magenta couplers. However, the dyes produced of the pyrazolone type magenta couplers have an undesirable secondary absorption which has been required to be improved.
For solving this problem, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,725,065, 3,810,761, 3,758,309 and 3,725,067 propose the pyrazolotriazole type couplers. However, these types of pyrazolotriazole couplers having reduced secondary absorption are still not sufficient in color forming ability. Therefore, further researches and studies have been made continueously with the purpose of improving the color forming ability, such as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) Nos. 60-55343/1985, 60-98434/1985 and 61-120152/1986.
However, most of the pyrazolotriazole type couplers described in the above-given prior art have been proved to be varied in tone according to the densities of a color developed image (hereinafter simply called a color density) when the couplers are used in silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials.
To be more concrete, it has been proved that a color reproducibility is lowered when a color density is increased, because the density on the short wavelength side is increased more than the maximum absorption density, that is, because the short wavelength side projects out on a spectral map.
The pyrazolotriazole type couplers having been researched so far include those not having the above-described problem, that is, those not having any tone difference caused by density variations. Such couplers are described in, for example, Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication Nos. 61-120146/1986 and 61-120147/1986. However, in any one of the pyrazolotriazole type couplers which makes improvements on the above-mentioned tone difference problem caused by density variations, the color developability thereof are still unsatisfactory. It has, therefore, been desired to make the research and development of pyrazolotriazole type couplers having been made improvements on both of the tone differences caused by density variations and the color developability.